Kay Miller IT 6750 Trend Analysis Competency #1 Reflective Practice Summary and Reflection I became interested in the possibilities

s offered by immersive virtual worlds while working on my Futures Reflection for IT6750, in which I imagined that such tools may become more common as offices go virtual and businesses look for ways to offer high-quality training while cutting expenses. The possibilities for tools such as Second Life go beyond simulating classroom-based instruction. Because Second Life allows users to accomplish things that are physically impossible in real life (such as flying or building any three-dimensional model that the imagination allows), Second Life has the potential to allow innovative methods of delivering tried-and-true content to audiences. Learning in Second Life presents a summary of Second Life and similar immersive virtual worlds as environments for collaborative learning and simulations. Second Life is similar to Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) such as World of Warcraft, however, there are no inherent objectives in Second Life, or points to be scored. Instead, Second Life encourages users, or residents, to wander though its many communities, start real and virtual enterprises and contribute to the building of new communities, including communities of learning. This paper is not designed to give an exhaustive account of all possible or projected uses for Second Life as a collaborative learning tool, nor does it give recommendations for using Second Life for learning. Learning in Second Life serves as an introduction to the trend of using immersive virtual worlds for learning and surveys some innovative examples of online virtual learning.